It's the A to Z Challenge and I'm heading for the home stretch. Today's letter is P for Post Office and Paperbackswap.com
I went to the post office this morning to mail some books. One of the benefits of living in a small town is that there's never much of a line at the post office. Just before closing or during lunch you can expect six or seven people to be in line, but the rest of the time there's only a momentary wait while the one other person in the lobby finishes up. I am not one of those people who constantly trashes the postal service. I lived in Central America for two years; I know what bad postal service looks like! Our local post office is friendly and efficient. I appreciate the job that our postal service does.
I rarely mail letters any more. Remember when we always had a stack of envelopes to mail at the first of the month to pay our bills? Now, like most people, I pay online. Most of our payments are automatically deducted from our accounts. I could die tomorrow, but the bills will still be paid...until the money in our checking account goes dry. Several years ago I stocked up on "Forever" stamps at Costco because there was going to be a postal rate increase. I've still got lots of those stamps, and there have been several rate increases. I'm getting a better rate of return on those postage stamps than I do for my savings account.
About the only things I mail are packages to my granddaughters and books. Several years ago my friend Linda, at Thoughts From a Bag Lady in Waiting, wrote about a paperback exchange that she uses. I signed up for Paperbackswap.com and have been happily trading books ever since. I have a terrible time letting go of books. Some, of course, are treasured books that I will read again or just hold on to for the memories, but most are just taking up space...but I still can't just let them go. Paperbackswap.com gives me a credit for every book I mail off to another member and I can use that credit to get a "new" book. The only cost is postage and that's only about $2.25 a book. Paperbackswap.com hasn't cured my book clutter problem, but every time I mail off a book, I'm happy to let it go knowing that I can get another one FOR FREE!!!! I do love getting those little packages in our mailbox. It's like my birthday. It's even more special when a book on my wish list becomes available. It shows up in my mailbox and it's just what I wanted! Check them out by clicking here.
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You are right about the postal service, it is really quite good. I'm not sure it will not be obsolete within the next ten years, but they do not deserve some of the criticism they sometimes get.
ReplyDeleteI still have a lot of paperback books, from back when I used to read. Can't make myself let go of them.
ReplyDeleteOur mail reliably shows up six days a week; the postal service does well with the junk mail and on-line purchases it still handles. Our post office is dicey. If it's Cathy behind the scale, skip the hello unless you need your head bit off. If it's Pam, she's ever so pleasant, but won't go out of her way. I miss Leon. If he wasn't up the the township box when I opened it he'd skip ahead in his tray and give me the mail anyway. In twenty five years, he's the only one.
ReplyDeleteOur post office is very busy most of the time. a lot of immigrant folks are mailing packages out of country and lack of English proficiency makes for time consuming processing. I avoid the post office if I can, and then I send my husband.
ReplyDeleteI have no problem letting go of books I've read, or tom has read. I just donate them to the local Good Will. Now that we both read books electronically, we have few to donate.
I do use the postal service for mail. We have to have a locking mail box because of mail theft, and I always take outgoing mail to the drop box at the nearby Safeway store. I do mail checks for my credit cars bills, but most everything else is on auto pay. I send a few cards and letters by mail, because i think it's fun to receive mail.
Oh I am so tempted to sign up for the exchange. I appreciate the reminder about this. I remember reading Linda's post.
ReplyDeleteBefore we moved, I always to my mail up to the post office at the University that was just a few blocks from our house. No one ever used. Departments in the University would have their mail picked up and delivered, but rarely did I ever see anyone go to actual postal room and office which functioned as a full-service post office. Now, we have to go to the real post office. Actually, I am mostly impressed by the one near our home. I've never had to wait long in line. I rarely mail anything from there as we have a locked postal collection and drop off place in our little community where we live. It is probably 100 steps from my front door. Maybe more, but let's just say it is very close.